{"id":151933,"date":"2025-08-17T01:39:12","date_gmt":"2025-08-17T01:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/151933\/"},"modified":"2025-08-17T01:39:12","modified_gmt":"2025-08-17T01:39:12","slug":"dan-tana-owner-of-celebrated-la-restaurant-dies-at-90","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/151933\/","title":{"rendered":"Dan Tana, Owner of Celebrated LA Restaurant, Dies at 90"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dan Tana, the actor who opened the iconic Dan Tana restaurant in 1964, has died. He was 90.<\/p>\n

The news was announced by the restaurant\u2019s social media team on Facebook<\/a>. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe great Dan Tana has passed on. We all know that he created a very magical place. Our beloved little yellow house will forever feel his presence,\u201d a statement shared on the platform began.<\/p>\n

\u201cDan started out working for La Scala and The Villa Capri in the 1950s. It was working for those classic eateries that encouraged him to open his own! And he did just that. He was always proud of where he came from and what he accomplished, a former soccer star from Yugoslavia.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cDan had wonderful stories about Marilyn Monroe, Joe DiMaggio, James Dean, Frank Sinatra, and Sammy Davis. In fact Robert Urich\u2019s character was named after Dan Tana on the classic TV show, \u2018Vega$.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cToday Dan Tana\u2019s is owned by his dear friend Sonja Perencevic who\u2019s kept it exactly the same since 1964,\u201d the statement concluded. \u201cThis man is a legend, and as you know a legend never dies.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tana\u2019s cinematic career kicked off with 1957\u2019s \u201cThe Enemy Below.\u201d He also had roles in \u201cThe Untouchables,\u201d \u201cRin Tin Tin\u201d and \u201cPeter Gunn.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Tana was born Dobrivoje Tanasijevi\u0107 in \u010cibutkovica,\u00a0Danube Banovina, then a province of the Kingdom of Yugoslaviaon, on May 26, 1935. He initially pursued athletics and even played professional soccer in Canada before moving to Hollywood, where he began taking acting lessons. <\/p>\n

Tana changed his name to make it more palatable to American audiences and landed the role in \u201cThe Enemy Below.\u201d He began working in restaurants, first as a dishwasher at Patsy D\u2019Amore\u2019s Villa Capri in Hollywood, to supplement his income.<\/p>\n

He took over a hamburger stand in 1964 and refashioned it into an Italian restaurant. The Los Angeles Times reviewed the restaurant and helped put it on the map; by the \u201980s, the Times wrote the establishment<\/a> was \u201cthe restaurant of choice\u201d for anyone who wanted to be \u201cseen in All The Right Places.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tana never lost his interest in soccer, and simultaneously became manager of the Los Angeles Toros in the 1960s, chaired an English team, and operated several soccer clubs throughout Belgrade.<\/p>\n

He sold the restaurant to Sonja Peren\u010devi\u0107 in 2009 and moved to Serbia. In 2014 he told the Hollywood Reporter<\/a> Peren\u010devi\u0107 had made good on her pledge to keep the restaurant exactly the same, and perhaps most importantly, \u201cWe are still serving my original customers \u2014 and their children and grandchildren.\u201d<\/p>\n

\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\"Ronnie\t\t\t\t\t<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dan Tana, the actor who opened the iconic Dan Tana restaurant in 1964, has died. He was 90.…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":151934,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[1582,276,89064,2961,224,5337],"class_list":{"0":"post-151933","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-california","10":"tag-dan-tana","11":"tag-la","12":"tag-los-angeles","13":"tag-losangeles"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115041557812777863","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=151933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/151933\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/151934"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=151933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=151933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=151933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}